August 3rd, 2010 by drval in News, Opinion
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I received this press release and was depressed by the prevalence of lawsuits filed against doctors in this country. More than 40% of physicians are sued at some point in their careers, and the vast majority of these suits are found to be meritless. If that doesn’t make you want to quit practicing medicine, I don’t know what does.
This kind of litigious climate definitely adds to my stress levels — and makes me fearful of caring for very sick and fragile patients who are likely to have poor outcomes, regardless of what I do. Many of my colleagues practice medicine with one eye always looking over their shoulder, wondering when that one bad apple will take them to court in an attempt at a financial windfall.
In Canada, those who bring frivolous lawsuits to court are responsible for all legal costs. Read more »
May 7th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Opinion, Research
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Depressed people ate about 60 percent more chocolate compared with others, and major depression more than doubled consumption, reported researchers in the usually-more-reliable Archives of Internal Medicine. Now researchers want to further delve into the issue.
“Whether there is a causal connection, and if so in which direction, is a matter for future prospective study,” the authors wrote.
We wonder if Hershey’s would provide samples for the treatment arm of such studies, and if so, how people can sign up?
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
May 4th, 2010 by DrPeggyPolaneczky in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, Opinion, Research
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A new report on lung cancer in women has been published by the Women’s Health Policy and Advocacy Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Called “Out of the Shadows,” the report seeks to raise awareness about lung cancer, currently the leading cause of cancer death in women, and more importantly, to increase funding for research for its prevention, detection and treatment. (Thanks to Booster Shots, the LA Times‘ fabulous health blog, for highlighting the report.) I encourage you to read the report, which is well written and comprehensive. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog that Ate Manhattan*
April 12th, 2010 by DrToniBrayer in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
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The healthcare reform bill is 1,017 pages long and contains a lot that will impact Americans. I’m one who believes we had to come into the 21st century and join the rest of the civilized nations in beginning to provide healthcare to all citizens. You be the judge.
Here are 10 things I bet you didn’t know are in the new healthcare reform bill:
- Menu labeling. Restaurants with over 20 employees must include calorie counts and other nutrition information on their menus.
- SWAG reporting. Doctors must report valuable goodies they receive from health vendors.
- Right to pump. New moms must be given space and time to pump breast milk (for employers with over 50 employees).
- Research. The bill includes research for postpartum depression.
- Tan tax. There’s a 10 percent tax on tanning booths.
- Adoption credit. Adoptive parents receive tax credits to encourage adoption.
- More research. The bill includes research for Indian health studies.
- Safety. The bill includes required background checks for long-term care workers.
- Right wing. The bill includes required abstinence education.
- Transparency. Employers must show employer and employee contributions for healthcare on W-2 forms.
Fox News (”fair and balanced”) has said that it’s “what you don’t know that can hurt you.” Fox also said that “42 percent of doctors said they would quit or retire if healthcare reform became law.” It’s time to stop the fear mongering, lies and deception and understand just what this reform will and won’t do for the American public.
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
April 8th, 2010 by DrDavidGorski in Better Health Network, Opinion, Research
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One of the things about science-based medicine that makes it so fascinating is that it encompasses such a wide variety of modalities that it takes a similarly wide variety of science and scientific techniques to investigate various diseases. Some medical disciplines consist of mainly of problems that are relatively straightforward to study. Don’t get me wrong, though. By “straightforward” I don’t mean that they’re easy, simply that the experimental design of a clinical trial to test a treatment is fairly easily encompassed by the paradigm of randomized clinical trials.
Medical oncology is just one example, where new drugs can be tested in randomized, double-blinded trials against or in addition to the standard of care without having to account for many difficulties that arise from difficulties blinding. We’ve discussed such difficulties before, for instance, in the context of constructing adequate placebos for acupuncture trials.
Indeed, this topic is critical to the application of science-based medicine to various “complementary and alternative medicine” modalities, which do not as easily lend themselves to randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials, although I would hasten to point out that, just because it can be very difficult to do such trials is not an excuse for not doing them. The development of various “sham acupuncture” controls, one of which consisted even of just twirling a toothpick gently poked onto the skin, shows that.
One area of medicine where it is difficult to construct randomized controlled trials is surgery. The reasons are multiple. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
April 1st, 2010 by DrDavidKroll in Better Health Network, News, Opinion, Research, True Stories
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Have you ever taken an over-the-counter heartburn relief remedy such as Tagamet, Zantac, or Pepcid? How about the beta-blocker atenolol (Tenormin) or metoprolol (Lopressor) for antihypertensive therapy, or the original less-selective beta-blocker propranolol (Inderal) for migraines, presentation anxiety, or stage fright?
If you answered “yes” to either question, you owe a debt of gratitude to Sir James Black, the Scottish physician who left us earlier this week at age 85. The best obituary I have seen memorializing Sir James comes from the UK Telegraph.
Black was called the father of analytical pharmacology and was said to have relieved more human suffering than thousands of doctors could have done in careers spent at the bedside. Certainly, no man on earth earned more for the international pharmaceutical industry. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*
March 24th, 2010 by DrRob in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion, Research
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Here’s some advice I have given teenage boys who are going toe-to-toe with their mothers about a health issue:
Don’t go toe-to-toe with your mother; it’s a no-win situation. Either you are right, and you are looked at as a “smarty-pants” or you are wrong, and have given her a huge “I told you so.” If, on the other hand, you keep quiet and listen to what she’s saying, it’s a win-win: either she’s right and you learn something, or she’s wrong, and you have been vindicated.
Fathers often pipe in that this applies to wives as well. Mom’s don’t seem to disagree (for some mysterious reason).
While this may be sound relational advice, it also needs to be heeded by the medical community in its relationship to “complimentary and alternative medicine” or CAM. I am not saying we shouldn’t be angry and frustrated with the CAM purveyors who are harming and even killing people (such as the anti-vaccine movement). I am not saying that we should embrace CAM and put it at anywhere near equal footing with our profession. What I am saying is that in our enthusiasm to win the argument, we can undermine our own credibility. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
March 12th, 2010 by StaceyButterfield in Better Health Network, News
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As one would expect from such a diverse group, comparisons were a common topic at the co-located National Medical Home Summit, National Retail Clinic Summit, and Population Health and Disease Management Colloquium this week.
During an opening session, Carolyn Clancy, head of the AHRQ, updated us on some of the comparison work her agency has been doing. Last year’s stimulus bill dedicated a lot of funds ($300 mill directly, more through the Secretary of HHS) to the agency’s work on comparative effectiveness. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
February 11th, 2010 by DrAmyTuteur in Better Health Network, Research
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As Harriet Hall has written, psychiatry bashing is a popular media sport. There seems to be a bias against treatment of psychiatric disabilities, and a common claim is that antidepressants are no better than placebo. The New York Times illustrated both the perpetuation of the myth that antidepressants are ineffective, and the increasing and disturbing tendency of major media organizations to confuse the wholesale acceptance of medical press releases with medical journalism.
In Popular Drugs May Help Only Severe Depression The New York Times credulously publicized the findings of a recent study that claimed to show that antidepressants are ineffective in treating mild and moderate depression. Yes, that’s what the study showed, but the study itself is so limited, so fraught with problems, and the conclusions are so misleading that the article is a terrible disservice.
Before we consider what the study showed, let’s think about what kind of evidence we’d need to conclude that antidepressants don’t work. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
November 6th, 2009 by DrJonathanFoulds in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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Every now and again I like to pick one of the classic research studies on smoking cessation in order to highlight some of the key findings. Today I’m going to focus on the part of the Lung Health Study.
The Lung Health Study is certainly one of the best smoking cessation studies ever carried out, partly because of the comprehensive nature of the assessment and follow-up of its 5,887 participants and partly because it was way ahead of its time in delivering a truly “state-of-the-art” intensive smoking cessation intervention which was compared in a randomized manner to the effects of “usual care”. The Lung Health Study (LHS) was a randomized clinical trial of smoking cessation and inhaled bronchodilator therapy in smokers 35 to 60 years of age who did not consider themselves ill but had evidence of mild to moderate airway obstruction. Read more »
This post, Classic Smoking Cessation Study Suggests You Can Save A Life For $2000, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds M.A., M.App.Sci., Ph.D..
I received this press release and was depressed by the prevalence of lawsuits filed against doctors in this country. More than 40% of physicians are sued at some point in their careers, and the vast majority of these suits are found to be meritless. If that doesn’t make you want to quit practicing medicine, I don’t know what does.
